Telco Talk

Sadly, I am no longer employed by IBM, so this blog which started as a team blog for the IBM Business Partner Technical Strategy Enablement (IBPTSE) Telecom team no longer represents IBM in any shape or form. As I became the Chief Telecom Architect for IBM for the WebSphere brand worldwide, I continued to write posts. The WebSphere brand merged into the new Cloud brand in 2015 and I retained the same role working with Telcos all around the world to design software solutions to solve their business problems. I left IBM in 2017 and am now working for DGIT Systems , a small IT company focused on helping Telcos be more agile through alignment with TMForum Frameworx - particularly for Order Management and Fulfilment solutions. My hope is to continue/resurrect this blog on Telecom business issues and technology.

Since I penned my last post, I have done some more reading on Facetime and watch Steve Job's launch of Facetime. While I will happily admit that Apple have in fact used some standards within their Facetime Technology (Jobs lists H.264, AAC, SIP, STUN, TURN, ICE, RTP, SRTP as all being used), I am somewhat bemused by the "standards" discussion that most of the media seem to be focusing on with regard to Facetime. Almost everyone that refers to compliance with standards is talking about interoperability with current PC based video chat capabilities - from the likes of Skype, MS Messenger, GTalk and others. Am I the only one that has noticed the iPhone 4 is not a PC and is in fact a mobile phone? Why is it that no one else is questioning interoperability with existing video chat capable mobile phones?

After thinking on this for a little while, I guess it might be that most of the media coverage about the iPhone 4 is coming from the USA - where is was launched. It's only natural. The problem with the US telecoms market is that it is not representative of the rest of the world - who has had video calling for ages and don't really use it. Perhaps it was the overflowing Apple coolaid fountain in the iPhone 4 launch that got the audience clapping when Jobs placed a video call, or perhaps it was just that they had never seen a video call before - I wasn't there so I cant be sure. Right now, the Facetime capability on the iPhone 4 is only for WiFi connections - which makes it pretty limiting. Apparently, there is no setup required, no buddylist, you just use the phone number to make a video call - which is the way video calling already works (see the screen dump of my phone to the right and the short video below), but the WiFi limitation on the iPhone 4 will mean that you have to guess when the recipient is WiFi connected. At least with the standard 3GPP video call, the networks are ubiquitous enough to pretty much guarantee that if the recipient is connected to a network, they can receive a video or at least a phone call. Job's didn't explain what would happen if the recipient was not WiFi connected - does it just make a voice call instead? I hope so.

If you look at the pixelation and general poor quality of the video call, consider that I am in a UMTS coverage area, not HSPA (the phone would indicate 3.5G if I were), so this is what was available more than seven years ago in Australia, longer in other countries. If I was in a HSDPA coverage area, I would expect the video call to be higher quality due to the increase bandwidth available.

I recall in 2003, Hutchison 3 launched their 3G network in Australia with much fan-fair. Video calls was a key part of the 3G launch in Australia for all of the telcos. This article from the 14Apr03 Sydney Morning Herald (on day before the first official 3G network in Australia) illustrates what I am talking about. The authors say that the network's "...main feature is that it makes video
calling possible via mobile phone." Think about it for a second. That's from more than seven years ago and Australia was far from the first country to get a 3G network. A lifetime in today's technology evolution. Still the crowds clapped and cheered as Jobs made a Video call. If I had have been in the audience, I think I would have yawned at that point.

The other interesting thing that I noticed in job's speech as his swipe at the Telcos. He implied that they needed to get their networks in order to support video calls. Evidence from the rest of the world would suggest that is not the case - perhaps it is in the USA, or perhaps he is trying to deflect blame for not allowing Facetime over 3G connections away from Apple and back to the likes of AT&T who have copped a lot of flack over their alleged influence on Apple's Application store policies involving applications that could be seen to be competitive with services from AT&T. I am not sure how much stick AT&T deserve on that front, but it's pretty obvious from job's comment that he is not in love with carriers - and certainly from what I've seen, carriers are not in love with Apple. It might be interesting to see how long the relationship lasts. My guess is that as long as Apple devices continue to be popular, both parties will be forced to share the same bed.

On another related point, I have been searching the Internet to find what standards body Apple submitted Facetime to for certification - Jobs says in the launch that it will be done "tomorrow" - this could be marketing speak for 'in the future' or it could literally mean the day after he launched the iPhone 4. If anyone knows please let me know - I want to have a look into the way Facetime works.

Thanks very much to my colleague Geoff Nicholls for taking the Video Call in the video above.

I came across this article today - Apple wanting to propose their new Facetime technology for video chat now that they finally have a camera on the front of their iPhone 4. I'm now on my second phone with a camera on the surface of the phone (that's at least four years that my phones have had video chat capabilities) which has not proved to be much more than a curiosity where Telcos have launched it around the world. I recall the first 3G network launch in Australia - for Hutchinson's '3' network - video chat was seen as the next big thing - the killer application, yet apart from featuring in some reality shows on the TV, very few people used it. I wonder why Steve Jobs thinks this will be any different. At least the video chat capabilities that are in the market already have a standard that they comply with which means that on my Nokia phone, I can have a video call with someone on a (say) Motorola phone. With Apple's Facetime, it's only iPhones 4 to iPhone 4 (which does not support a 4G network like LTE or WiMax I hasten to add). If Apple really is worried about standards as the Computerworld article suggests, then I have to ask why doesn't Apple make their software comply with existing 3GPP Video call standards instead of 'inventing their own'. If Apple were truly concerned about interoperability, that would have been a more sensible path.

According to Wikipedia, in Q2 2007 there were "... over 131 million UMTS users (and hence potential videophone users), on
134 networks in 59 countries.". Today, in 2010, I would feel very confident in doubling those figures given the rate at which UMTS networks (and more latterly, HSPA networks) have been deployed throughout the world. Of note is that the Chinese 3G standard (TD-SCDMA) also supports the same video call standard protocol. That protocol (3G-324M - See this article from commdesign.com for a great explanation of the protocol and it's history - from way back in 2003!) has been around for a while and yes, it was developed because the original UMTS networks couldn't support IPv6 or the low latency connectivity to provide a good quality video call over a purely IP infrastructure. But, things have changed with LTE gathering steam all around the world (110 telcos across 48 countries according to 3GPP) and mobile WiMax being deployed in the USA by Sprint and at a few other locations around the world (See WiMax Forum's April 2010 report - note that the majority of these WiMax deployments are not for mobile WiMax and as far as I know, Sprint are the first to be actively deploying WiMax enabled mobile phones as opposed to mobile broadband USB modems) so, perhaps it is time to revisit those video calling standards and update them with something that can take advantage of these faster networks. I think that would be a valid thing to do right now. If it were up to me, I would be looking at SIP based solutions and learning from the success that companies like Skype have had with their video calling (albeit only on PCs and with proprietary technology) - wouldn't it be great if you could video call anyone from any device?

I guess the thing that annoys me most about Apple's arrogance is to ignore the prior work in the field. Wouldn't it be better to make Facetime compatible with the hundreds of millions of handsets already deployed rather than introduce yet another incompatible technology and proclaim it as "... going to be a standard".

I am sitting here in Singapore and reading today's Straits Times, keeping up with the affairs in the region and around the world where on page 3 (the most important page in a newspaper after the front page) is an article about the leaked/lost next generation iPhone that Gizmodo reportedly paid US$5000 dollars for (other online reports that I've read have suggested other amounts such as US$350. I'm not sure who is right). The article occupied almost half of page 3.. for the next gen iPhone... that seems excessive to me for a non-specialist publication, but I guess it is reflective of the general hype that exists around Apple products. The previous hype was around the next gen MacBooks with faster processors and prior to that the iPad. I've read articles suggesting that the iPad will revolutionise newspapers and home computing and telcos. I'm not so sure. While I think a lot of iPad will be sold worldwide (once it is released outside of the USA), but I also think a lot of those devices will get a lot of use through a honeymoon period and then sit idle until they are eventually disposed of. I am so sick of the hype around all these Apple products. There are some things that Apple do really well (UI and Design) and some they do really poorly (Business use support, locking in users). I respect them, but I do not like them.

App Stores Background

I know lots of people are saying that Apple invented the Application Store (App Store) for their iPhone/iTouch range of devices, but they would be wrong. App stores have been around for years - I have been a customer of Handango since before I joined IBM's Pervasive Computing team and that team has been gone for over three years now. Handango are an Internet based app store that have supported multiple handheld PDA and phone platforms. Others that I've used in the past include Tucows, although Tucows is more than just mobile applications - they also cover Win32, Linux, Mac etc as well. The big things that Apple did differently from Handango and their Internet brethren was:

Restrict applications to a single platform (I count the iTouch and the iPhone as the same thing since the key difference lies in the Mobile Phone part, not the computing part of the device)

Restrict the development tooling and platform environment by license restrictions (All applications must be approved by Apple and must not breach their license agreement - you still can't get a Java Virtual Machine on an iPhone for instance)

Force users to install via their iTunes installation on their PC/Mac or over the air from their device. Not being an iPhone user, I am not 100% sure of this point. Is there an iTunes install for Linux? (Other platforms allow apps the be installed via bluetooth, memory cards, IR and direct USB copying.)

Of course, Apples' device competitors are trying to catch the same wave that Apple have been riding and deploy their own application store equivalents. We've seen efforts from Google, Nokia, Palm and Research In Motion (RIM - makers of the Blackberry) and interestingly, all have been somewhat successful. Successful at attracting developers which is key to then attracting users. Here are the their app stores:

Personally I am not a fan of Apple's restrictive market practices and much prefer the more open ecosystem that surrounds the Symbian and Windows mobile platforms. I have in the past written applications for Palm Garnet (nee PalmOS), Symbian and Windows Mobile for use within a corporate environment. Something that is not possible with Apples licensing policies and forcing developers to upload apps to the App Store so that Apple can approve them and then include them in the App Store catalogue. If I only want to write an application for my customer, I cannot deploy it directly to the customer's iPhones unless they have been jailbroken - the only alternative is for Apple to look at and approve the application then sign it. While the others also have the concept of signed and certified applications, you can install unsigned or un-certified applications on the other major platforms if you want (except for Android which appears to be going down a similar if less restrictive path to Apple).

Telcos and App Stores

In the past year as Telcos all around the world have watched Apple's App Store take off and seen their interaction with the iPhone subscribers being reduced to the supplier of the pipe to the Internet - way down from the high value position that most carriers aspire to in order to improve ARPU. I've seen requests form many Telcos in that time for Application Store or Widget Store capability. The telos - understandably - want to raise their profile in the eyes of the subscriber and their worth in the value proposition. I have seen request for proposal documents from telcos in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, USA and queries from telcos in Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, Japan and other countries. App/Widget Stores are certainly one of the topics of the moment for Telcos.

The key differentiators that a Telco has that separates it from Apple's App Store are:

The ability to sell things other than on device applications - this might include pre-paid top ups, ringtones, ringback tones, telco hosted applications (that could be delivered by the Telco's Service Delivery Platfform (SDP)

In fact, IBM has won and has (partially at this stage) implemented an app store in Vietnam. Because of the Telecom environment in Vietnam, this App Store is not actually within a telco, but is instead an external company*. The app store was implement with a combination of WebSphere Portal (to provide the user interface) and WebSphere Commerce (to provide the catalog and sales part of the App Store and WebSphere Message Broker for Integration requirements. I was involved from the very initial stages of that project.

The company intends to
launch a Mobile Commerce and Advertising Platform (MCAP), which is a
multi-channel platform enabling its members to do small value electronic transactions (or m-commerce and e-commerce. Some of their use cases include

Online marketing, advertisement and promotion services over Internet and Mobile.

I don't often get involved in WebSphere Commerce projects (it tends to be a very specialized field) we do have a number of Telcos who are using WebSphere Commerce, not necessarily in App Stores, but based on the experience in Vietnam, it would not be a big leap to add that capability to their existing deployments.The usage of WebSphere Portal provides a easy and extensible user interface primarily targeted at the PC, and with the addition of the Mobile Portal Accelerator (nee WebSphere Everyplace Mobile Portal Enable) to the existing Portal, that user interface can be extended to over 10,000 separate devices providing subscribers with an optimized experience for their device.

Where does this leave those Telcos who haven't made the leap to their own app store? In my opinion, they still have time to catch the wave, and certainly if they want to avoid the Apple effect and being reduces to a bit pipe provider, then they need to do something to add value in the eyes of the subscriber. Apple's model doesn't help them with that, but perhaps the other device specific app stores wont be so carrier unfriendly. I will see what I can find out on this issue and report back in another post.

Buy for now

* Once that customer has agreed to be a formal reference, I will share additional details in a future post.

If you want some background reading on App Stores, here are a couple of articles I would suggest: